Teratrend SST-TS431U 4-bay USB 3.0 Storage Tower Review

SilverStone is a company that you will most certainly have heard of. They produce a large range of Cases, Power Supplies and Storage devices. On the other hand, the name Teratrend probably won't mean much to you. Teratrend is a new division of SilverStone dedicated to delivering professional storage solutions. Teratrend currently list 7 products on their website, 4 of which are Tower Storage Solutions. Today's product is the 4-bay USB 3.0 and eSATA version, called the TS413U. Each bay can theoretically cater for 4 TB drives giving an impressive total storage of 16 TB in one enclosure. However, total capacity isn't everything, and we hope the TS413U can deliver good performance as well. Specifications: Model No. TS431U Enclosure material Aluminum + SECC Color Black Fan size 60mm cooling fan x2 HDD size support 3.5”HDD/SSD HDD interface support SATA III/SATA II/SATA I Enclosure interface USB3.0 (Max. 5Gbps) compatible with USB 2.0 eSATA ( Max 3Gbps ) *For recognizing multiple separate HDDs (Non-RAID) with eSATA port, SATA multiplier is required Power Supply Internal universal power supply design(115V/230V) Input: AC 100-130V / 200-260V, 50Hz/60Hz Output:DC +5V/6V +12V/11A Net Weight 3300±20g HDD Drive Support Up to 4TB per HDD is supported Certifications CE、FCC、RoHS compliance Dimension 266mm (D) x 187mm (W) x 130mm (H) LED indicator Power LED - Blue for power on HDD status LED - Blue for HDD detected Red flashing for HDD access Environment Operating Temperature: 5°C ~ 35°C Operating Humidity: 20%RH ~ 80%RH Storage Temperature: -20°C ~ 50°C Storage Humidity: 20%RH ~ 80%RH Accessories TS431U (hard drives not included) USB 3.0 cable x 1 e-SATA cable x 1 Power cord x 1 User manual x 1 The Teratrend TS431U comes in a dark blue/green box with two product pictures on the front; the left-hand picture is of the TS431U, TS431S and the TS433U and the right-hand picture is the TS432U. On the one side of the box it lists the specifications of the device and the dimensions of the product. The back of the box tells us the key feature for each of the 4 models. In the case of the TS431U this is; support USB 3.0 and eSATA maximum transfer speeds. The last side of the box tells us about the LED's, the two exhaust fans and the screw-less design. Opening up the box we see a standard packaging design, with two Styrofoam blocks at either side. Included with the TS413U is a user manual which has 2 pages on the product and then some very simple operational steps. The Teratrend device has a built-in power supply and so they only need to include a power cable. The Teratrend TS431U can be connected by either USB 3.0 or eSATA. The Teratrend TS431U is a compact tower enclosure and stands at a height of 130 mm. The simple Teratrend logo can be found on the front in the bottom right corner. On the top of the device are 5 LED's; one is for power indication and the remaining four for HDD power (blue LED) and activity (purple LED). The front of the device has a magnetic door, which after opening allows you access to the 4 bays, and the crucial power button. At the side of each bay is a simple lever which allows you to slide the drive in, and also locks it in place once the HDD has been inserted fully. Both sides are finished in a sleek black which does, unfortunately, show up fingerprints easily. The back of the device features the power supply, 2 x 60mm exhaust fans and the USB 3.0 and eSATA ports. The bottom of the device features 4 rubber feet, which are unfortunately only glued in place (two had already fallen off when we took it out of the box), and the air intake. This air intake coupled with the two fans should keep up to 4 HDD's cool. We easily installed 2 x 3.5" Seagate Barracuda 1TB drives into the enclosure. To test this enclosure we will be using two 1TB Seagate Barracuda drives, which offer speeds of up to 125 MB/s when plugged in directly via SATA III. We will test both drives individually via USB 3.0 and eSATA, and then set-up a Raid configuration to further test the maximum theoretical speed. Processor: AMD Bulldozer FX 8-core 8150 CPU @ 4.2 GHz. Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3. Cooler: Antec Kuhler H20 920 CPU Cooler. Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 1800+ MHz. Graphics Cards: AMD Radeon 6450 HD (GPU @ 850 MHZ, Memory Clock @ 1000 MHz). Power Supply: Akasa Venom Power 750W. Boot Drive: Kingston HyperX 3K 120 GB (OS only). OS: Windows 7 Home Edition 64bit. Software: CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2. HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB x 2. Testing the 2 x Seagate Barracuda 1TB drives over USB 3.0 gave us good results, peaking around the 125 MB/s mark. We then connected the device via eSATA and the final results were remarkable close to the USB 3.0 results. While there is no built-in raid controller in the TS413U we can set-up a striped volume using the built-in windows disk manager, however, you are only able to do this over eSATA and not USB 3.0. The performance of the Raid 0 volume increased noticeably, although the write speeds only increased by 10 MB/s compared to the read speed increase of 25 MB/s. If you were to set-up four drives in raid 0 you could get some decent speeds via eSATA but unfortunately we weren't able to test this today. Overall the performance of this device is very promising, especially coupled with capable Hard Disk Drives. The Teratrend SST-TS431U by Silverstone is a simple 4-bay Storage Tower which features both USB 3.0 and eSATA support. This gives the flexibility to use whichever connection you want, and the potential to use up to four large hard drives. As the TS431U doesn't feature built-in raid options, by default they will all show up individually within the Windows environment. It is however possible to set-up a striped (Raid 0) volume or a mirrored (raid 1) via eSATA. In terms of using the TS431U as a back-up device, it is great. It is very easy to install or remove disk drives and it is very quick to turn the device on and configure. The design of the tower might be simple; a solid rectangular chassis, four tool-less bays and 5 LED's, but it is very well-built. That said, two of the rubber feet on our review sample fell off. The hinged-door at the front swings smoothly, with a strong magnetic catch so it shuts positively - it also helps to reduce the noise characteristics of the drives. We were certainly impressed with the weight when we took it out of the box, reassuring they are using heavy duty materials for construction. The company added 60 mm exhaust fans keep the drives cool, and we didn't notice any build-up of heat within the enclosure. The performance of the enclosure is excellent but it is a shame that with a device like this you are unable to set-up a Raid configuration over USB 3.0. Overall the TS431U is a well-built storage tower with great features and it is very easy to use. It is ideal for those professionals who want to perform thorough back-ups of their documents and files regularly. It is also ideal for a home-office based system, as you don't have to use all 4-bays religiously. The unit is available now from SCAN for £119.28 inc vat. Pros Flexible storage system. Well built and designed. USB 3.0 and eSATA. Easy to install/remove HDD. Quiet but cool enclosure. Cons No built in raid restricts ultimate performance. Rubber feet fall off easily. Kitguru says: A very well-built product from the new Teratrend division of SilverStone.